


I Hear Them All the Time

by enigma731



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Trailer, Backstory, Childhood Memories, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 04:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14011707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: She finds the jacket in a junker shop on Xandar. The colors wouldn’t look particularly distinctive to anyone else, but sheknowsthese hues, the richness of the reddish brown, the practically-invisible stitching that still manages to hold the strips of leather in place sturdily.“Hey,” comes Peter’s voice, breaking into her reverie, and suddenly she wonders how long she’s been standing lost in memory. “What is it?”“This--” She clears her throat as she reaches out to run her fingers along the arm of the jacket. “This is Zehoberei made.”





	I Hear Them All the Time

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this post.](http://enigma731.tumblr.com/post/171931416145/guys-look-at-her-clothes-here-her-jacket-in-vol)
> 
> Thanks to [invisibledaemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisibledaemon) and [philthestone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone) for helping me hash out my thoughts.

“I have a memory of my mother,” says Gamora. It seems only fair -- she’s known Peter for a scant few days, but he’s already shared half a dozen stories of his childhood, clearly precious to him. 

He looks up from the blaster he’s cleaning, surprised. Perhaps this is not the most graceful way she could have brought it up, but she’s been thinking about it all day, wanting to repay the generosity of his honesty. This sort of thing does not come easily to her -- not like it does for him.

“Just one?” he asks after a moment, apparently realizing that his response has made her question her intent.

“Nearly.” She sits at the table across from him, takes her sword from her hip and snags one of the polishing cloths he’s been using. It feels better, having something to do with her hands. “A few, I guess. But one that I like best.”

Peter nods, puts down the blaster, and offers her the bottle he’s been drinking from, a silent invitation to elaborate.

Gamora regards the bottle for a long moment -- it’s still more than half full, and its contents have the distinct smell of strong liquor. She picks it up and takes a swig. It isn’t as though the alcohol will affect her, but the burn of it in her mouth is oddly grounding, as well as the sense of camaraderie it brings. This particular memory is one of her most well-guarded secrets.

“It isn’t very exciting,” she admits. “I remember there was a tree that grew through the center of our house. My homeworld was like that; we built our cities among the trees so that they weren’t disturbed.”

“Cool,” says Peter, sounding genuinely enthusiastic. “Did you climb it? I would’ve climbed it all the time.”

She takes another drink and smiles a little. “Yes. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did, particularly when I wanted to stay up late at night. The memory I’m thinking of was one of those nights. My mother was preparing food for the morning, and I recall sitting in the branches, watching her. She must have known I was there, but she didn’t say anything to me or my father.”

“Did anything else happen?” he asks, and she can’t decide whether he’s disappointed or simply curious.

“No,” she sighs. “It isn’t that kind of memory. I like it because it is just -- peaceful.” Perhaps this wasn’t as much of a worthy offering as she’d originally thought.

Peter returns her smile, though, reaching out to touch her hand very lightly. “I have some memories like that too. Like just...sitting and listening to music with my mom. Sometimes I like those best.”

* * *

Finding Peter on the bridge is a minor shock. Partly it’s the fact that she’d assumed she was the only one up this early, though this isn’t the first time they’ve encountered one another in the dead of night, sharing the inability to sleep.

The thing that disturbs her more is the sight of his now-familiar Walkman laid out on his lap, clearly in a state of disassembly, with a panel of some sort pulled off the back. She feels an immediate, instinctive sense of alarm at that, strong enough that it surprises her when he looks up and smiles at the weight of her hand on the arm of his chair.

“Hey.”

She frowns, still trying to figure out what he’s doing. “Is it broken?”

“What?” Peter glances back and forth between her and the Walkman before the meaning of her question seems to sink in. “Oh! No, no, just changing the batteries. Picked ‘em up from one of my contacts this morning while you and Rocket were stocking up on ammo.”

“Oh.” Gamora exhales and folds herself into the co-pilot’s seat beside him, feeling foolish for the adrenaline that’s now rapidly fading in her chest. “Good. That’s good.”

Peter studies her, his expression softening. “You were really worried about it.” It’s a statement, not a question.

She shrugs. “It’s important to you. A remembrance of your mother. I wouldn’t wish losing that on anyone.”

“Thanks,” he breathes, and finishes what he’s doing, slipping the panel back into place on the Walkman before looking up at her again. “Hey, do you have anything like that? Like...a keepsake of some kind?”

“No,” she says immediately, then pauses, because that’s not exactly true. It’s her instinct to act as though she’s entirely unattached, knows too well how caring about anything can be used as a weapon against her. But Peter deserves her trust and, moreover, she wants to give it to him. “My sword.”

He looks surprised. “I thought Thanos gave it to you?”

Gamora takes the Godslayer from the belt she’s strapped on over her sleeping clothes and lays it across her lap, tracing the lines of the hilt with a fingertip. “He did. But it reminds me of my father. My _real_ father.”

“How’s that?” asks Peter, his gaze straying to her hand.

“My father was a great warrior for my people, before I was born,” she says slowly. She believes this is true, knows it in her blood as strong as anything, though in the intervening years she’s come to question many of the fleeting memories she still has. “He lost his leg in a fight and was forced to retire. After that, he dedicated his life to forging weapons.”

Peter looks back up again. “Did he make swords?”

She nods. “Yes. I remember sitting with him, watching him work the metal through fire. I remember that he made me a blade -- a small one, with blunt edges, so that he could teach me how to hold it. That was my most prized possession.”

He smiles, but it looks decidedly sad. “And your sword now?”

Gamora picks it up, hefts its comforting weight in her left hand. “It’s a beautiful weapon. Deserving of honor and respect, he would have said. I couldn’t leave it with Thanos anymore than I could have stayed myself.”

“And now you’re using it to right his wrongs,” says Peter, his tone full of understanding now. “I didn’t know your dad, but personally I couldn’t think of a better thing for a warrior to do.”

She feels her cheeks flush a bit, surprised by her own sense of pride in that. “I am trying.”

* * *

“You really need more practical garments for the weather,” says Gamora, upon finding Peter shivering violently in his bunk the morning after a job in sub-zero temperatures. He’s sweating, too, and obviously feverish, but his only remedy seems to be the empty bottle she spots on the floor. 

When Peter doesn’t respond, she scoops it up and sighs. “This your idea of medicine?”

He sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of a hand. “Worked for the Ravagers. You come to make fun of me or what?”

Gamora sits on the edge of his thin mattress, trying not to be stung by that assumption. He isn’t feeling well and she certainly is not the caring type. Instead she holds out the cup of water and bottle of pills she’s dug out of the small kit that serves as the Milano’s infirmary. “No, I came to bring you these.”

“Oh.” He looks surprised, but doesn’t immediately unwrap his arms from his blanket cocoon to take them. “You -- Why?”

She frowns. “Because I would like you to feel better? Did you think I _wanted_ you to be miserable?”

“No!” he says quickly, then coughs for a moment. Carefully he extracts one hand, using it methodically to swallow two pills before bundling up as tight as possible again. “No, just -- Ravagers weren’t real big on sympathy, you know?”

“This is not sympathy,” says Gamora, because she means it to be more than that. She can’t readily find better words, though. “This is...support?”

“I like support,” says Peter, then shudders again, biting his lip.

She hesitates, reluctant to leave him like this, but simultaneously afraid of intruding too much on a moment of vulnerability. “Is there anything else that you need?”

He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head, expression turning sad. “You ever just -- really want your mom when you’re sick?”

Gamora pauses again, considering her answer. She knows exactly what he means, has had the instinct countless times under the tortures of her past, but has largely come to see it as nothing more than a danger to her survival. Still… 

“My mother used to braid my hair when I was sick,” she says at last, allowing her thoughts to dip into the memory, to the way it makes her chest feel heavy and tight. “I mean, she braided it all the time, but it was different when I was sick. My people had...something of a healing ritual that involved caring for the hair. Nothing magical or scientific about it, more spiritual, I suppose? I remember that she would brush my hair, then braid and unbraid it, over and over again until I fell asleep.”

His eyes are glassy when he meets hers, a decided wistfulness in them too. “That sounds nice.”

“It was.” She nods, sits in silence for a long moment listening to the harsh sounds of his breathing, deciding slowly that she trusts her own judgment. Then she reaches out and threads her fingers into his sweat-dampened curls, just stroking gently until she feels his body go boneless and still.

* * *

“Still nothing from any of my contacts,” says Gamora, tossing the holo onto the table harder than she probably ought to, frustration boiling over. 

“Huh?” Peter looks up from where he’s been sitting, deep in the middle of what appears to be a solo with imaginary drums, and pulls off his headphones. The song continues from around his neck, tinny now. “Wha’d you say?”

“I said _nothing,_ ” she repeats, dropping into the chair opposite him for what feels like the dozenth time in a week. They’re going to need to spend some time somewhere other than the Milano soon, or she might die of cabin fever.

“No, you definitely said something, what was it?” Peter scratches his head, looking so comically confused for a moment that she can’t entirely hold onto her irritation.

“I said I haven’t _heard_ anything,” she says for a third time. “About Nebula’s whereabouts.”

“ _Oh._ ” He runs a hand through his hair again, which just makes it stick up more. “Um. I didn’t wanna ask this, but...how do you know she’s alive? You said she fell off a ship.”

Gamora laughs, a mix of bitterness and regret. “Because I know how hard she is to kill. Because I have tried.”

Peter sobers at that, but she sees only sadness in his gaze, none of the horror she’s used to having leveled at her when people discover the truths of her past. “I’m sure she didn’t give you a choice.”

“ _Thanos_ did not give _us_ a choice,” Gamora corrects. “He made sure all of his children were ready and willing to kill each other at any given moment.”

“You _aren’t_ his children,” says Peter, with such ferocity that she finds herself equal parts surprised and pleased. She’s said it herself plenty of times, but she isn’t used to people actually taking that to heart. 

“My point stands,” she says, though. “We are all difficult to kill.”

“Hey.” There’s a look of epiphany in his eyes, but he still hesitates a moment before voicing the thought. “Is that why he took you? Were you a warrior, like your father?”

Gamora smiles at his perceptiveness, but shakes her head. “He took me because I tried to kill him.”

Peter’s eyes widen, though he’s just asked her very nearly the same thing. “What? How old were you?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” she admits. “Young enough to not remember my age. But...I told you of the toy sword my father made for me?”

She waits for him to nod before she continues.

“I saw what Thanos was doing to my people, to my _parents_. I couldn’t simply stand by and watch, so I took it and I--” She breaks off, blows out a tense breath. “It was like a thorn to him. I couldn’t even reach his knee. But he said I had spirit, so he made me his daughter instead of his conquest.”

“No,” Peter insists, surprising her again. “Maybe that’s what he thought. But you are _your_ father’s daughter. You chose that for yourself.”

* * *

She finds the jacket in a junker shop on Xandar, which is oddly poetic since she’s rapidly coming to think of this planet as the place where her new life began. 

It’s shoved into the middle of a rack of beaten up leathers, most of them so dirty and worn that she’s nearly given up even looking for pieces to salvage. But when she pushes aside the giant-sized pants that have been shoved onto a much-too-small hanger, she freezes, heart immediately pounding in her throat. 

The colors wouldn’t look particularly distinctive to anyone else, but she _knows_ these hues, the richness of the reddish brown, the practically-invisible stitching that still manages to hold the strips of leather in place sturdily. 

“Hey,” comes Peter’s voice, breaking into her reverie, and suddenly she wonders how long she’s been standing lost in memory. “What is it?”

“This--” Her voice sounds uncharacteristically soft, breathless in her own ears, and she clears her throat as she reaches out to run her fingers along the arm of the jacket. “This is Zehoberei made.”

“Oh!” He grins, looking almost as pleased as if they had just discovered something from his own homeworld. “You’ve gotta get it!”

She takes the jacket from the rack, but hesitates. It isn’t new, has clearly seen battles of its own, but she has the skills to restore a piece like this. “It isn’t just a fashion statement. This was a warrior’s coat.”

“Even _better_ ,” he insists. 

“I don’t know,” she says softly, though her heart is fluttering with how badly she wants it. “I am the last of my people, but...I don’t know if I will ever be a good example of what they stood for. I don’t even remember most of our traditions.”

“You remember this one,” he points out. “C’mon. It’s made for a warrior. You’re a warrior. You need it and it needs you. Like something out of a movie!”

She rolls her eyes, though she’s undeniably touched by his silliness. Turning to face him, she catches sight of the Walkman on his belt, the headphones around his neck. The mementos of his home that he carries with him proudly, regardless of the fact that he’s grown separately from it. 

Gamora pulls the jacket on, feeling the way it hugs her shoulders, the weight of it on her back. A piece of something she’s assumed was lost forever, here, enveloping her.

“It’s _perfect_ ,” says Peter.

She nods once and smiles. “Yes. It is.”


End file.
